


the sleeper

by kpkndy



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Alcohol, Death, Detective AU, M/M, Sex, Violence, lots of smoking, noir
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-28
Updated: 2017-01-28
Packaged: 2018-09-20 11:02:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,581
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9488249
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kpkndy/pseuds/kpkndy
Summary: hanzo shimada wants to find a dead man. jesse just wants to get paid.





	

**Author's Note:**

> guess what i was replaying when i decided to write this.

The neon of the takeout sign buzzes in the window.    
  
It flickers through the missing slats of the closed blinds and invites flies in for the kill. Jesse doesn’t mind it. He’s lived with it these last six months, and that’s long enough to succumb to sleep in it’s inconstant flashing.    
  
Only horizontal beams travel far enough to land on his form, at rest over his desk. Strips of effervescent blue and flashes of reds exaggerate the shine of his lowball in the dark, and the bottle next to it, as if a trembling light is being shed on his indignities. The betting stubs, as they are, are kindly hiding beneath one of his heavy arms.    
  
So Jesse sleeps --sleeping off the evening, it would seem, and the sign out of the window buzzes fluctantly, and everything seems in perfect function until his door opens.    
  
The light from the hall must be on. It bursts through the door hot and bright as burning magnesium, and Jesse rears his head in a sudden motion, his eyes burning as he tries to make out the dark figure in the door.    
  
They must have come up from downstairs, whoever they are. Lena left. He keeps forgetting, but Lena’s a long time gone. Said she missed the old days, about doing some good for --well, anybody. Said it hadn’t been the same since--   
  
“We’re closed.” Jesse coughs, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand as he sits up in his seat. The light from the hall is settling to him, now. He can make out the form of a man thereabouts, before the door swings shut hard and then the figure disappears into a smoky darkness.    
  
Small strips of neon catch something shining on his calves. Like metal. The footstep are silent and weightless and the figure comes closer to the desk.    
  
“You do not look like the type who can afford to turn down legitimate work.” The figure speaks --some kind of accent. The words would be harsh in and of themselves anyway. It rubs Jesse wrong.    
  
“An’ if you need work done, you can come back tomorrow.” He tries to get up, groggily, knocking over a bottle of something as he moves in the dark. “Like I said.” Jesse clears his throat. “We’re closed.”    
  
“My business cannot wait until tomorrow.” the man says, without sounding the least bit panicked, moving over to the window. Jesse still doesn’t hear his footfalls, but gets a better look at a dark pair of eyes when the man’s hand pries open the blind slats as if to look out onto the street. “Name your rate, and I will pay you for this work.”    
  
He must want it bad. Jesse would be relieved, frankly, if he could get a look at the man’s face. There’s all kinds of business that he’s been asked to do before, but he doesn’t deal with strangers like that now. It’s been a long time since he’s dug a shallow grave, and he’d like to keep it that way.    
  
“What kinda work, exactly?” He asks, squinting in the darkness towards the stranger. “There’s kinds of business I won’t do.”    
  
The slats in the window close. The figure is veiled once more, for a second. “A missing person.” He says, simply. “That needs be found.”    
  
It’s not divorce work. Hell, it looks legitimate enough that he has half a mind to think it’s luck. The other half of his mind is less than convinced. “I work by the hour.” Jesse says, then. “Fifty-three an hour plus expenses. Payment at the end of each day.”    
  
He open with it, because that’s normally when the desperation comes out. It sorts the saps from the real business. Jesse isn’t interested in bleeding hearts --not anymore.    
  
But the stranger isn’t phased a bit by that kind of talk. “You will start immediately.”    
  
At that, Jesse barks out a laugh. “Sweetheart, it ain’t your name on my door. I’ll start when I’m good and ready.” He opens his desk drawer and finds a carton of cigarettes, with a single one left inside. “I don’t even have any leads, yet.”    
  
As he puts the cigarette between his lips, he hears the strike of a sudden match, and then , barely a foot from him, he can see a sharp face across the desk illuminated by firelight but for a second, before the stranger lights the tip of his cigarette and vanishes once more.    
  
He seems to withdraw for a second, before Jesse can see something being extended to him. Something small, white and rectangular. A piece of paper.    
  
“Here.” The man says, coldly, as Jesse takes it.    
  
Not paper at all, but a photograph. As he turns it over to examine what he’s seeing, he thinks about turning on his desk lamp.    
  
Then a strip of neon illuminates a face on the picture, and Jesse drops it into the desk quickly.    
  
He lets a breath out. He shakes his head.    
  
“That man’s dead.” Jesse murmurs, plainly. He take the cigarette out of his mouth and cover it with the other like he’s afraid to say anything more.    
  
“So you know him?” The stranger speaks again. His voice sounds almost pleased --as if he had anticipated this reaction.    
  
“Yeah.” Jesse says, quietly. His fingertip tracers the picture in a tiny, imperceptible movement around the face of the pictured man. “Yeah, I knew him.”    
  
Gabriel Reyes is smiling in the picture. Jesse wishes he could remember him like that.    
  
But he doesn’t.    
  
So he swallows again, and murmurs. “That man’s dead.”    
  
“ _ Lost _ .” The stranger says, quickly. He comes closer to the desk and take the picture away, and Jesse is almost relieved to have the sight removed. “Lost, and you will find him.”    
  
Jesse turns away, then. He takes another long drag of his cigarette and sighs. “Listen, friend.” He turns back around and tries to look unaffected. “I can’t find you a dead man.”    
  
The man comes forward again, hands on the desk. Jesse can see his dark eyes, the irises illuminated in neon red, almost like an omen. “What makes you think this man is dead?”    
  
Jesse wishes the picture were of someone else. He wishes he could take a paid job. He wishes he never had to encounter Reyes’ memory ever again.    
  
“I saw him die.” Jesse says, then, holding his face in one hand. “That evidence enough for you? I saw the whole building--”   
  
“Did you see the body?” The stranger interjects.    
  
Jesse’s stomach turns at the very idea. Of Gabriel’s body, helpless and in pieces, waxy in death. “No.” He says. “No, but I--”   
  
“Did you--” The stranger stands up straight. His hands move from the desk. “-- _ see _ the body; with your own eyes?”    
  
Jesse has nothing to say for himself, then. He thought this business was behind him. That he could forget.    
  
“Who are you?” He asks, then, done with the mystery of it. “What’s this man gotta do with you?”    
  
A look of conflict seems to take a hold of the man’s face before it is mastered into passiveness. It only lasts a microsecond in the dark. But Jesse sees it, all the same. “He and I shared a --a vested interest.”    
  
It’s unsatisfactory, at best. Jesse comes around the desk and towards the stranger, near-angrily. “Who  _ are _ you?”    
  
The sign outside flickers again. It illuminated the man’s face fully, now. High, regal cheekbones. Dark hair. Trained, but angry eyes. Jesse sees only that in the second of well-seeming light before the neon buzzes into darkness again, and the man merely says. “Hanzo.”    
  
His other hand emerges in the darkness with a cigarette of his own, and he lights it by pressing the end of it to Jesse’s in a bold display. “You may call me Hanzo.”    
  
Hanzo takes a long drag of his own cigarette, before exhaling strange, foreign-smelling smoke into Jesse’s collar. He takes something from his pocket, and slips it into Jesse’s in a purposeful movement.    
  
“This woman.” He says, with great thought. “She is as good place to start as any.”    
  
And with that, he moves away, turning, revealing something long and too long to be hair that trails slightly from his head. Like a ribbon. Jesse has seen something like it before. In someplace he hasn’t recalled in years. As he reaches the door, Jesse coughs out, suddenly a little stricken.    
  
“I never said I’d find your man.” he says, strained.    
  
Hanzo doesn’t even turn around. “You will.” He says.    
  
The door opens. He disappears.    
  
With that, Jesse is left alone in the darkness once more, irritated and heavy-headed. His stomach burns with cheap whiskey and buried memories that are uncovered, now. The smell of Hanzo’s cigarettes register to him as familiar, somehow, but he cannot say how, or from where, and it frustrates him so much that he has to sit down again just to consider things.    
  
He puts his cigarette in his ashtray to let it burn out. He no longer has an appetite for it. Instead, he pulls the whatever Hanzo had left him in his top pocket.    
  
Another card: this time, a business one.    
  
_ ‘Angela Ziegler’ _ is all the card reads. It has a small image of two serpents entwined on a staff. The card itself is the colour of daffodils. There is an address and number at the bottom.    
  
Jesse doesn’t have to look. He’s been there before.    
  
But not in a long time. 


End file.
